Firebird Synchronization to AWS Cloud

Bipost Sync is an ETL-like Windows program to continually send data from Firebird SQL to AWS Aurora-MySQL and back forward.

We just released Bipost Synchronization version 1.1.0.

New features:

  • Run unlimited time stored procedures after data is uploaded to Aurora (previously limited to 5 minutes).
  • Improved security for two-way synchronization.
  • Improved support for special characters, e.g. now able to sync XML documents inside BLOB fields.
  • First time customers: Automated creation of AWS services via CloudFormation template.

 

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.1

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.1, a major release which shows the power of a large and diverse community of contributors with a significant number of new and improved features:

  • Colibre, a new icon theme for Windows based on Microsoft’s icon design guidelines, which makes the office suite visually appealing for users coming from the Microsoft environment;
  • A reworked image handling feature, which is significantly faster and smoother thanks to a new graphic manager and an improved image lifecycle, with some advantages also when loading documents in Microsoft proprietary formats;
  • The reorganization of Draw menus with the addition of a new Page menu, for better UX consistency across the different modules;
  • A major improvement for Base, only available in experimental mode: the old HSQLDB database engine has been deprecated, though still available, and the new Firebird database engine is now the default option (users are encouraged to migrate files using the migration assistant from HSQLDB to Firebird, or by exporting them to an external HSQLDB server);
  • Significant improvements in all modules of LibreOffice Online, with changes to the user interface to make it more appealing and consistent with the desktop version,
  • An improved EPUB export filter, in terms of link, table, image, font embedding and footnote support, with more options for customizing metadata;
  • Online Help pages have been enriched with text and example files to guide the users through features, and are now easier to localize.

Last week to register for the 15th FDD

[This is mostly for Brazilians]

The online subscriptions for the Brazilian’s 15th Firebird Developers Day conference will end on Friday, August 10. The attendees of the conference will be able to buy several tools and components with exclusive discounts from our sponsors and supporters: IBSurgeon, FastReports, uniGUI, TeeChart, IBObjects, IBExpert, Woll2Woll, ACBr and Gnostice.

Visit the conference site to check all the information and register for the conference.

DBMS migration in LibreOffice

Repost from TDF blog :

In 2017, The Document Foundation (TDF) launched four tenders aimed at improving LibreOffice in several strategic areas, and documenting the approach and work carried out, to foster sharing of knowledge and inclusion of the wider volunteer community.

One of the tenders was focused on the implementation of a HSQLDB binary format import in LibreOffice (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/05/04/tender-implement-hsqldb-binary-format-import-libreoffice-201705-03/), and after a careful evaluation by the Foundation’s Board of Directors – with the help of competent and independent volunteers – has been assigned to Collabora.

Tenders are funded by donations, and are supposed to improve LibreOffice in specific areas where the tasks are beyond the capabilities of independent volunteer developers, and also share the knowledge amongst the volunteer community to foster active participation in development and related tasks.

Collabora has developed a mechanism to import database files with high fidelity from the HSQLDB binary file format, used by many existing ODB files, by reading the Java serialization code, and writing a filter to import all data into LibreOffice Base. The objective was to remove the legacy Java/HSQLDB database and to simplify the move to Firebird.

Tamás Bunth, the Hungarian software engineer working at Collabora who has worked at the tender, has extensively reported about the progress and the results on his personal blog:

  1. DBMS migration in LibreOffice: Firebird and HSQLDB schema import
  2. DBMS migration in LibreOffice: HSQLDB binary import
  3. Final steps of LibreOffice database migration
  4. Database migration in LibreOffice: bug fixes and more

The feature is going to be released with LibreOffice 6.1, as an experimental one (to allow some further testing before being officially released with LibreOffice 6.2). So, to access it users have to flag the “enable experimental features” option in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced. If the option is not enabled, the embedded HSQLDB database engine remains the default for new Base files with LibreOffice 6.1, as in any previous version.

If experimental mode is enabled, the embedded Firebird database engine will not only be enabled but will also become the default, while the embedded HSQLDB database engine – although deprecated – will still be available as an alternative.

LibreOffice Base users are encouraged to migrate their database using the embedded HSQLDB to embedded Firebird new migration assistant (released with LibreOffice 6.1 as part of the tender), which is not using the HSQLDB database engine and will be available in LibreOffice releases even after the embedded HSQLDB support will be fully removed.

At the same time, LibreOffice Base users who want to stick with the HSQLDB database engine should start planning the migration of their database to an external HSQLDB server.